


a sweet reprieve

by Ellipsical



Series: Oh! how I love [2]
Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe, Anal Fingering, Blow Jobs, Deciding you don't like something in the moment, Fisting, Frottage, M/M, Modern AU, Not Really?, Sussex, almost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-02 07:08:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10212233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellipsical/pseuds/Ellipsical
Summary: Sometimes sex is tricky.Title taken from Keat's poem,Oh! how I love on a fair summer's eveWhen streams of light pour down the golden west,And on the balmy zephyrs tranquil restThe silver clouds, far - far away to leaveAll meaner thoughts, and take a sweet reprieve





	

There is no sight so perfect in all this world, I don’t think, than waking up in Sussex on a Saturday morning with nowhere to go and nowhere to be and not one single demand on our time, to see John Watson sitting up in bed beside me, sipping coffee carefully from a misshapen earthenware mug of my own, admittedly clumsy, design (Pottery, it turns out, is not my forte), his pair of slim black reading glasses perched on his nose as he reads the newspaper folded in half and spread lengthwise over his lap.

I have told you of how delectable his mouth was. Have I mentioned how stimulating just the simple sight of him was?

Especially in the morning.

He was exquisitely rumpled in the morning. His silver-blonde hair standing up in adorable cowlicks at the crown of his head, his fringe swept off to the side by his fingers. It puffs up a bit from his forehead, the left side laid flat from where he was sleeping on it. There were pillow creases crisscrossing his cheek and the ruddy freckled skin of his shoulder. He was just beginning to lose his summer tan. It fades to a pale toasted gold in the winter months before once more darkening to bronze in July and August. I would miss his freckles when they went and as October edged towards November I made note to give them some little extra attention before the long draught ahead.

He still had not noticed my attention, ardent as it was, so I continued to drink my fill.

Our duvet puddled around his waist, his broad chest bared to the pearl silk light spilling in through our windows. Outside, the grass was tipped in sterling. The frost would crackle beneath my boots if I were to walk the downs, as I was sometimes in the habit of doing if I could not seem to quiet my mind and needed some other distraction so that I don’t, for instance, snipe at the man sitting so innocently beside me in bed.

John Watson’s chest was a testament to both war and peace. His left shoulder, of course, bore witness to his service to Queen and country. He was the bravest man I knew. The type who, without hesitation or compunction, would throw himself into harms way if it meant saving another. He had saved my life countless times, but, much to my chagrin, I was not the only one he risked himself for. If retirement held any luster it was this: that John would be safe. He would be hidden away in our charming Channel-side hamlet, pottering about our hermitage, safe and sound and hale for the rest of his, hopefully considerable, days.

Despite all his propensity towards getting himself embroiled in dangerous situations and taking up with the likes of someone like me, within that same chest beat John Watson’s heart and truly, _truly_ , it was unparalleled in the history of Brittania. Possibly the world. Dare I say the universe? It was entirely within the realm of possibility.

It was the most loyal and stalwart of hearts. It was both passionate and tender, sympathetic and kind. I have not yet found the limits to it’s capacity to forgive, nor it’s capacity to love. It was, as I said, unparalleled. And I am utterly undeserving of it. It was my life’s great work to live up to that heart which he has, inexplicably, entrusted to me.

“Sherlock.”

I jumped a little at the deep rumble of his voice as it broke in on my thoughts. At this time of day his Scottish heritage comes out and he slightly burrs his r’s. It makes me shiver down to my toes every time. His eyes had not left the newsprint, but the corner of his mouth was twitching up. I wanted to kiss it.

I hummed and shifted closer to him instead. Sliding my leg over his until it rested comfortably in between his two shins. My chest was pressed against his thighs, my arm wrapping around his waist, my face tucked into his hip. I breathed in the sharp sleepy scent of him. His left hand fell from where it had been cupping his mug and slid into my hair, his fingertips warm, nails lightly scratching my scalp. I practically purred, my eyes slipping shut in bliss.

“What were you looking at so intensely, hmm?” he murmured, continuing to stroke me. Continuing to send frissons of pleasure down my spine. Continuing to placidly read his article as if he weren’t beginning a very different sort of activity altogether with his sure, electrifying touches.

“You,” I whispered into his skin, basking in his attention. “You’re quite glorious in the morning, you know.”

“And you,” he scoffed, “are delirious. Go downstairs and have your coffee. That should snap you out of it.”

“You remind me of Apollo, riding in on the dawn.” I pressed closer, brushing my lips over the jut of his hipbone and into the piquant crease of his thigh.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked, incredulous, setting his coffee and his glasses aside. I heard them clatter against the table top. He laid his hand across my forehead. “Do you have a fever? Are you ill? You are never, and I mean _never_ , this chipper in the morning. I think I’d know if you were drunk…ah.” It came out slightly breathless at the end and his hand tightened ever so gently at the nape of my neck, exerting the merest of pressures, urging me down. I pushed the lip of the duvet aside as I happily complied, nuzzling the tip of my nose down into the wiry honey colored curls. He spread his legs wider for me as I pushed myself up and over until I was settled between his bent knees braced on my elbows, the newspaper slipping off his lap and landing on the floor with a quiet rustle.

“Good morning,” he said softly, cupping my face. The look in his eyes was so affectionate it made my bones ache with the pure sweetness of it. He was simply happy to see me. Content just to be near me. What boon chance that I met him when I did. When he was brought low by nightmares and the betrayal of his injured body. Met at any other time in his life I would have been a poor substitute for the partner he deserved. Someone less moody, less supercilious, less vain, less melancholic. I have tried my best to convince him of it, to often disastrous effect— I have never again seen the shade of blue his eyes achieved, for instance, on a night seven years past, when I suggested, quite selflessly I thought, that he leave me for the sweet blonde haired nymph of a client named Mary Morstan—but no matter what I say, no matter how despicably I behave, he stays.

He stays.

And I, well, I try my best to make him happy.

I am quite clever with my tongue, I am told, and my hands are quite possibly my most elegant feature. He has devoted enough words to them in print, you would think they had done something worthwhile, like sculpted the David or composed a rather memorable violin concerto in A minor perhaps. I do not understand his obsession with them, however with their aid I get to worship his body so I suppose there’s something to his adulation after all.

I was perfectly primed to do exactly that: worship him. My palms molded themselves to the soft curves of his arse, his thighs falling ever wider, and his eyes darkening, flooding with pupil.

“Don’t you want to come up here and say hello?” he asked, his voice gruff with desire, his thumbs tracing the contours of my cheekbones as he so loves to do. I love it too and I leaned instinctively into the touch.

“I’m busy,” I replied, intending to get to work, but the smile that spread across his face was irresistible, damn him, and when he dipped down to greet me my lips parted to welcome him.

He tasted, as I have said, of everything that is good and right in the world.

On this particular morning that was coffee and sugar and milk and _home_ and I licked each flavor from his tongue.

“Don’t let me distract you,” he mumbled against my lips, the utter cad, doing exactly that. He kissed me even deeper still, stealing any chance of a reply, and I found myself rutting helplessly against our mattress, my heart beginning to race a bit quicker than I would have liked at that stage of the game.

“John, if you want this to last at all, you had better leave off,” I reproached him when he had finally released me long enough for me to catch my breath. I instantly regretted it though as he pulled away chuckling to lean back against our headboard.

“By all means,” he said, motioning towards where his cock was fattening up nicely against his stomach. He was grinning again, which is infectious, you should know, and even after years of continued exposure I have yet to build up any kind of immunity, so, as I bent my head over his lap, I was grinning as well.

The soft sound he made when I took the tip of his cock inside my smiling mouth was encouraging.

The way his hands fell, light and stunned, on top of my head as I took him deeper, his cock hardening against my tongue, was _extremely_ encouraging.

When he exhaled hard and sharp, “Oh, God,” and his hips thrust up of their own accord, the only thing I thought was: _You can do better than that_.

I wanted only my name on his tongue, not some deity that neither of us believed in.

I bobbed. I licked. I sucked. I bit. (Gently) I let him at one point grip the base of his cock to draw a slick path across my bottom lip, his eyes slitted, his lips parted.

He traced the bow of my upper lip as well with the plump velvety tip and then painted a wet line across my right cheek until I turned my head and caught him once more, taking him deep into my mouth until the fat round head was fitting itself into the back of my throat. I swallowed against him and the resulting moan, incoherent and desperate, was very close to good enough.

I took a moment then to watch him, kneading at his perineum with one knuckle while I wrapped the other around his prick and worked him in time with my mouth.

What a sight.

When John gives himself over to me he is never more beautiful.

A rosy blush moves up his torso to burn brightly in his cheeks. His nipples draw up tight and dark and hard, and the pale hair on his chest stands on end. The look on his face is one of deep concentration and complete vulnerability at the same time. His brow knits together but his mouth goes slack, his eyes shut tight against the sight I present. He has told me in the past that if he watches me suck his cock he would be able to last all of two seconds. He claims I look utterly debauched while I’m at it, but it’s him who writhes like a tart, his hips stuttering up as he tries and fails to control himself from burying his cock as deep as it will go. He also keeps up a litany of absolutely filthy language muttered under his breath, which, when pressed later, he can remember nothing of.

“Suck it,” he was saying at present, panting. His chest rising and falling quickly, his fingers clenched in my hair. “Oh, suck my cock like you mean it. That’s it. God, you’re such a slut for my cock. You suck it so good, Sherlock. So good. Oh, fuck. _Fuck_.”

It’s usually at this point, when he disintegrates into mindless cursing, that I employ my best tricks and bring him off with a bang.

But I had further plans for him that morning and I didn’t want him to spend quite yet.

When I pulled off, he moaned and reflexively tried to push my head back down.

“No, no, what are you doing?” he gasped, his eyes flying open, as I clambered up to straddle his lap.

I kissed him silent, sticking my tongue into his mouth, and he groaned against my lips, his hands clutching hard at my hips, trying to bring me flush against him so that our cocks would rub together. I braced my hands on his shoulders and held myself away.

“Stop,” I said, and he stilled.

Instantly.

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking contrite. His eyes were fuzzy with lust and he blinked, as if trying to clear it. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—“

“Stop,” I said again, because that was not what I had meant.

I leaned forward and rested my forehead against his.

“I’m rather desperate for you to fuck me is all, and I need a moment to collect myself, or I’ll just end up frotting against you like an animal and it will be over in seconds.”

I felt him smile against my jaw.

“Frottage sounds pretty fantastic right now actually,” he said, sounding rueful. He was right, it did sound fantastic. We engaged in that particular act on a frequent and very satisfactory basis. It was beautifully suited to a quick morning shag, in fact. But I wanted something a bit different today.

“There is lube in the bedside table, will you get it, please?”

“Oh, we’re playing at polite today are we?” he teased, ribbing me a bit, but fetched it none the less as I tried, with only middling success, to get my body under control. The last time I had been inside him, after his rugby match, I had come embarrassingly quickly. If I wanted this to last a little longer, and I did, he needed to be the one doing the penetrating.

“All right, my love, what do you want?” he asked softly, when his fingers had been slicked. My heart clenched tight when he called me that and I swallowed hard a few times before I could answer him.

“Your fingers,” I said, resting my hands on the tops of his speckled shoulders. “Please.”

He nodded and slipped his hand underneath me.

If John at his most beautiful was when he was giving himself to me, John at his most commanding, his most masterful, was when I was doing the same to him.

In his hands I am putty. I am wholly his and he knows it.

He wields his power with a gentle yet complete control.

Here is my captain, my doctor, my partner, my husband.

My love.

Did you see how he slid an arm around my waist as the fingers on his other hand circled me down below?

He held me in place, forced me to still, concentrating my attention on where he was touching me.

I sat up a bit, digging in my knees, giving him more room to work. He rewarded me with just the tip of one finger pushing inside.

“John,” I gasped.

He tucked his face into my neck and canted his mouth up so that he was speaking against my ear. “I’m going to feed you every inch of my big cock. Every. Single. Inch. I need you ready for me, my love.Open for me. That’s it. That’s it.”

There it was again.

That term of endearment. I couldn’t tell if it was simply the possessive _my_ that did it, but…

It made my chest constrict and my heart thud hard.

It made me bury my hands in his hair and tilt his beloved face up to mine and kiss him, wanting to taste it on his tongue.

He added another finger, working me slowly through the burning stretch, and I moaned loudly into his mouth.

I sunk down, taking him deeper. Two knuckles and more, until I was rocking against his palm.

“Three,” I said, shifting restlessly. “Three.”

“Easy,” he said, pulling back just far enough so that I could drown more easily in the blue blue bluest burning blue of his eyes. “Easy.”

I whined a bit and rocked myself back and forth and John, clever boy, finally gave me what I needed and pressed the pads of both his fingers down onto my prostate and I bucked forward.

It brought our cocks into alignment and I shuddered, overwhelmed by sensation.

John unwound his arm from around my waist and reached between us, taking us both into his loose fist.

I rolled my hips and rubbed us against each other, hot satin foreskins gliding, as John swept his thumb over our crowns, smearing his pre-come over both.

It felt dangerous.

I was already fraught with longing. My blood pounded. My breath came hard and fast.

Just when I was about to beg John for something, anything, he pulled his fingers almost completely out of me and slowly, added a third.

Heat fell in a crash down my spine to pulse in my groin.

I moaned and gripped his shoulders and closed my eyes.

“Do you need more, Sherlock?” I trembled and nodded, bit down on my bottom lip. Yes. Yes to whatever he was offering. I needed more. I wanted more. More of him. As much as he was willing to give me.

“Could you take four do you think?” he asked and I shook, wracked by uncontrollable shivers as he continued to rub his thumb over the heads of our cocks, his three fingers screwed deep inside me.

I arched my back and let my knees slip wider, grinding down.

“Sherlock.”

I was nodding, I am sure of it.

“Yeah?” he sounded surprised. And maybe just a little hopeful.

I mumbled something and he let go of us to cup my cheek and air rushed into my lungs, cold and sweet.

“What did you say?” he asked, his forehead creased, his eyes intent and earnest, searching mine.

“I said—“ My voice was shaking. I licked my lips and tried again. “I want your whole hand.” 

His head jerked back a little and his eyes widened, but just there, just a flicker there and gone; I saw something catch and begin to smolder, something hot and dark, and heat melted down my thighs at the sight of it.

“I want that,” I hurried on, wanting to reassure him. “I want it all. Please, John.”

“Sherlock…” he still sounded uncertain.

I reached down and took up the bottle of lube. I wet my fingers and slipped them down to where John’s three were buried inside me. I lined up my index finger and slowly, slowly, slid it in beside his.

His breathing changed. It went ragged and when I looked up at him his eyes were black-blue and he surged forward and crushed our mouths together.

“All right,” he said, hoarse, a few moments later. “All right.”

I slid my finger out and wrapped my hand once more around his shoulder. I gripped him tight, holding on.

He used an obscene amount of lube, spreading it all over his thumb and pinky finger, the back of his hand and his palm. I rose up on my knees to let him adjust and tried to steady my breathing.

At last he tipped his head back, his hand positioned, and his gaze hit me like a blow.

I held his eyes with my own and drew in a deep breath.

I felt him tuck his pinky finger inside my stretched rim.

He paused, giving me time to get used to it.

It hurt.

Not in an urgent way.

More in a way that a sore muscle twinges. A bruise pressed. An ache.

John wrapped his hand around the back of my neck and drew me down to him.

He kissed me softly.

“You beautiful, magnificent thing,” he whispered, his voice filled with awe.

I whimpered.

He twisted his wrist slowly and I could just feel his thumb nudging up alongside the others.

I sucked in a breath as I felt it breach me.

No.

No No No No No No No

I could not force the word past my lips, but John saw, he saw, as he always sees. He was always watching me and he saw the word screaming through my eyes and he drew his hand back and out and wrapped his arms around me and hugged me tightly to him, murmuring something in my ear.

I could not hear him over the roar of my blood.

Shame licked up my cheeks, hot and throbbing. Tears stung the backs of my eyes and my stomach rolled sickeningly.

I hid my face in John’s throat, unable to meet his eyes.

What was the matter with me?

I so hate to disappoint him.

And I had seen that look in his eyes, that spark, when I had suggested it. I had heard that note of awe in his voice. He had wanted this scenario. The illicitness of it appealed, perhaps.

But I had ruined it. Ruined the entire morning and now how was I supposed to…what was I supposed to do now?

“Sherlock,” he was using his army voice on me. His hands were pressed to my shoulders and he was pushing me away from him. “Sherlock, look at me right now.”

I couldn’t.

I hung my head and let my hair fall into my eyes. I had never felt more naked, more exposed, more _inadequate_ in all my life.

His index finger, blunt, lightly calloused, the rough whorls and ridges imprinting on my slapped and smarting skin, tipped my chin up.

“There you are.”

There is no sight so perfect in all this world than John Watson in the morning.

Delightfully disheveled, eyelids still heavy with sleep, the morning light picking out the sapphire flecks in his irises. His thin pink lips a little swollen from my kisses, his cheeks flushed, his stubble a light dusting of silver and gold along his jaw, his hands so strong and steady as he rubs my back. He is my Apollo; he is my dawn, my light, my life. There is no Sherlock Holmes without him.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what exactly?” John asked, sounding angry. “Because if you say you are sorry because you didn’t like it, then I will probably have to come up with some kind of outlandish chore for you to complete for me today, like scrubbing out the bath or scraping the bug carcasses off the Morris’ windshield. So think very carefully about what you are sorry for because you know I have a knack for this sort of thing.”

He is outrageous when his temper is up. But I deserved it.

“I know you wanted…” Flustered, I bumbled.

“Sherlock…” he growled.

“You did! I know you did! I’m sorry I ruined—“

“Be quiet.”

I may have huffed.

I, unlike him, am not at my best in the morning.

“You did not ruin anything…” he started and I flared my eyes wide and pressed my lips together and looked pointedly down into the space between our bodies to where his cock, now soft, rested against my own.

“I thought I hurt you,” his voice caught and broke and I looked back up at him. His eyes were pinched at the corners and he looked frightened and guilty and that was…entirely unacceptable.

“You didn’t. Oh, God, John, you could never,” I said, horrified at the very thought.

“Are you sure? Because the way you looked…” he trailed off, shaking his head, his eyes shining. “I’ve never seen you look like that before.”

“It just.” How could I explain? “It just didn’t feel…right,” I finished lamely. I shrugged my shoulders. It wasn’t often that I found myself at a loss for words, but there you have it, it does happen on occasion.

John was still shaking his head. “I don’t ever want to… I don’t want you to ever feel like that again. You have to tell me ok? Even if I seem into it, it would kill me, Sherlock, _kill me_ , if I hurt you or pushed you past your limit. You have to tell me. I can’t read minds like you can. You have to. Promise me.”

I kissed him.

He’s wrong. He can read me. Maybe not in the way my collar lies, or from the mud on my boots, but he knows me as no one else does, sometimes, even better than I do myself. And it was an interesting thought: what would I have done if he hadn’t been looking at me? Would I have pushed on? Would I have grit my teeth and let him push his hand inside me even if my entire body was telling me no? I would go to great lengths to please him, I knew. And experiencing pain was not something I balked at, hmm…I would need to ponder it further. A gritty little ethical problem to unravel over breakfast. The prospect was enticing.

“Promise me,” he said, as I tried, unsuccessfully, to comfort him with my mouth.

This thing he was asking of me, this promise, had seemed silly and unnecessary only a moment ago, but the question of my own moral turpitude still lingered, and so I said, “I promise. I promise.”

I needed him more in that moment than I normally do and that is saying something. I needed to wipe the board clean, start fresh. I needed to be joined with him, assuage him with my body, reestablish our connection.

I kissed him until my lips felt raw and by the end of it we were both breathing hard.

“Please,” I said, falling sideways off his lap and drawing him down on top of me. “I need you. Please, John.”

“I don’t think…” He bit his lip, hesitating.

Rolling my eyes, I grasped him by the hips and tugged him down and we both groaned.

We slid together, hot and hard and slippery and perfect.

He slid his arms beneath my shoulders and buried his face in my neck. I wrapped my legs around his waist and rocked him into me.

Frottage, it turned out, was in the cards after all.

“I love you,” he whispered into my skin, over and over.

 _I love you_ , I said, as I held him tight to me.

It wasn’t long before we both needed more.

He reared up over me, braced on his hands and began to thrust in earnest. I reached between us and gathered us into my hand and John threw his head back and moved harder. Fucking the tight circle of my fist, rubbing deliciously hard against my own prick, the red leaking heads of our cocks pushing up and out of my hand.

The sight of John above me—eyes closed, his face contorted in ecstasy, his fringe falling into his eyes—pushed me over the edge and I came hard, pulsing in hot white stripes over the plane of my stomach and chest.

He pushed up on one hand and took himself in the other, his fist flying over his cock, and just at the last, the last moment before he fell, he opened his eyes and met my gaze and I said to him sure and calm, “Come for me, John. Come for me, my love.” And I don’t know if that particular endearment had the same effect on him as it did on me, but he convulsed, body arching, and came, shivering and gasping, all over me. I slipped my hand behind his neck and pulled him down and kissed him through it. Our tongues pushing against each other, tangling and licking, as our hearts slowly beat back to equilibrium.

When he pulled away from me at last we stuck together, and, laughing, he went to fetch a wet flannel to clean us up.

He sat across my thighs and dragged it across my chest and belly, rubbing lightly. The water dried cool on my skin and I trembled.

He saw.

As he sees everything.

And, drawing the duvet over us, he settled back down against my side, resting his head on my chest, and threading our fingers together on the pillow beside my head.

“What do you want to do today?” he asked, looking out the window at the gray pea soup October fog.

“This,” I said, stroking my hand down his back, utterly content.

He shifted around until he was looking at me, resting his chin in the center of my chest. “You will get bored of this in minutes,” he said, knowingly.

How wrong he is.

I will never grow bored of him.

Look at him!

In our bed, in our home in Sussex, on a Saturday with nothing to do but what we like. His hair sticking up all over and stubble burn on his throat, he looks sex-tumbled and sleep-mussed and freckled and golden and absolutely lovely and, well…

He was grinning at me again, the cheeky devil, and my mouth tugged up, I can’t help it.

It is the most perfect sight in all the world and I will not hear any arguments against it.


End file.
